How Big is Your Church?

 Then

One of the first crises in the church was: Shall we admit Gentiles into our fellowship? Could Gentiles be believers? Resolution did not come easy. Finally the Jews swallowed their pride and begrudgingly allowed the Gentile outsiders to come into the fold. Their restrictions seemed fair enough. All these new converts had to do was to be circumcised and follow the laws of Judaism. But the issue was not quite as settled as they thought.

Paul addressed their action when he wrote a letter to the Galatians. He told his people that their welcoming did not go far enough. The Gentiles did not have to subscribe to all the Jewish regulations. All these Gentiles had to do was to be baptized and proclaim Jesus is Lord. It was a new day. Faith had come and even these non-Jews were children of God with no strings attached.

Sometimes Paul got carried away. He pressed his point by telling his Jewish colleagues that all the old categories they had followed all their lives were not enough. What about ethnic or religious divisions, they asked? And Paul said no. Surely, they said, socio-economic forces must be taken into consideration. Stubborn Paul still shook his head. The Jews persisted. Don’t tell us that gender differentiations don’t matter. And for a third time Paul said no. And what followed was absolutely subversive. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ.” They noted his emphasis on the all. No wonder the Jews were outraged. Paul said their all was not big enough?

When Halford Luccock read this Galatian passage he observed that the hardest words to learn in any language were never the long words but the short words. The Galatians had no trouble pronouncing the long, ponderous words: Law, Circumcision, Disciplinarian, or Barbarians. But the Galatians stumbled and stuttered over the little words: Faith, Grace, Baptism, and especially all.

Now

I can understand the Jews’ frustration. When I started preaching over 40 years ago, except for empty pews, a large heating bill and an irate member or two, my little rural church was fairly calm. I spent most of my time on the big words like God’s love and the amazing power of grace. But one day I drove down the highway, turned off on to a dirt road to a tumble-down house where I smelled and saw poverty first-hand. And while I was trying to fill the pews with respectable people, some of those poor tenant farmers and their noisy children came in on a Sunday morning and sat on the second row. And I found myself turning from the seemingly important words to a little word: all.

Finally the church settled down—we thought. And into our little comfortable church there came back from college three of our kids except they now had long straggly hair—one or two even wore sandals. And they stood up and asked: What are you going to do about the Vietnam War and the draft? This all was turning up in some strange ways.

After dealing with poverty and this troublesome war-- I moved on to another place. The honeymoon was scarcely over when someone stood up and asked: Why don’t women serve as Deacons in this church? Hmm. Well, this issue took a lot of time and a multitude of meetings and when it over one sunny Sunday morning we ordained two women. The next day the local association got wind of this heresy and politely withdrew fellowship from our church. I was beginning to learn that sometimes all is a very hard thing for the church to say.

This, of course was not the end. While we were singing and having church a group of fundamentalists were working overtime in our denomination. They took over our literature, our seminaries and even our mission boards. And people began to march down the aisle after church with their big Bibles wanting to know if I believed every word of the Bible was literally true. And I began to realize that this tiny word, all was bigger than I ever thought.

I moved on to another parish and one Sunday out of the blue AIDS walked into my new church and sat on the second row. This was followed weeks later by several gay men and women that asked for membership. Most of us have been there. There were countless meetings and angry members. We lost our biggest givers. Everything got shaky. But finally I was so proud when the church said All loud and clear.

So retirement came and I was relieved that most of my battles were over. And in my first Interim, September 11th happened. The next Sunday a dark-skinned man met me at the back door following the service. He told me he was a Muslim and he wanted to know if my God hated all his people. We’re still unpacking that question in church.

I took a second interim and looked across the pews and realized that the congregation was split right down the middle. It was Presidential election time and we had Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. I remember asking a friend if most of her church were Democrats or Republicans and she smiled and said: “Depends on which side of the altar you’re on.”

The March Goes On

And so the march goes on. Paul’s words to Galatia keep upsetting every generation: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or females; for all of you are one in Christ.” And so we Christians might as well tighten our seat-belts. When we least expect it—some Sunday morning our settled worship will once again be interrupted by something. Illegal immigrants. Global warming. Health Care. A war that seems to have no end. Whoever it is—I guarantee you she will sit on the second row and her name will be All.

(The above article was written for The Christian Century and published June 15, 2010. It was written for the June 20th Sunday Lectionary passage for the church. The text was Galatians 3.23-29. The photograph comes from the Catholic Church on St. Giles Street, Oxford, England where Gerald Manley Hopkins served as an assistant curate for one year.)